Contents

Early life and education

Siddhartha Mukherjee was born to a Bengali family in New Delhi, India. His father, Sibeswar Mukherjee, was an executive with Mitsubishi, and his mother Chandana Mukherjee, was a former schoolteacher from Calcutta (now Kolkata). He attended St. Columba's School in Delhi, where he won the school's highest award, the 'Sword of Honour', in 1989. As a biology major at Stanford University, he worked in Nobel Laureate Paul Berg's laboratory, defining cellular genes that change the behaviours of cancer cells. He earned membership in Phi Beta Kappa[10] in 1992, and completed his B.S. degree in 1993.[1]

Contributions

Research

A trained haematologist and oncologist, Mukherjee's research focuses on the links between normal stem cells and cancer cells. He has been investigating the microenvironment ("niche") of stem cells, particularly on blood-forming stem cells. Blood-forming stem cells (called haematopoietic stem cells ) are present in the bone marrow in very specific microenvironments. The main blood-forming cells called osteoblasts are one of the principal components this environment. These cells regulate the process of blood cell formation and development, by providing them with signals to divide, remain quiescent, or maintain their stem cell properties. Mukherjee's research has been recognised through many grants from the National Institutes of Health and from private foundations,[14] including the prestigious "Challenge Grant" awarded by the National Institutes of Health to pioneering researchers in 2009.[18]

Mukherjee's 2016 book The Gene: An Intimate History provides a history of genetic research, but also delves into the personal genetic history of the author's family, including mental illness. The book discusses the power of genetics in determining people's health and attributes, but it also has a cautionary tone to not let genetic predispositions define fate, a mentality that led to the rise of eugenics in history and something he thinks lacks the nuance required to understand something as complex as human beings. The Gene was shortlisted for the Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize 2016, "the Nobel prize of science writing".[31] The book was also the recipient of the 2017 Phi Beta Kappa Society Book Award in Science.[32]

Chance events—injuries, infections, infatuations; the haunting trill of that particular nocturne—impinge on one twin and not on the other. Genes are turned on and off in response to these events, as epigenetic marks are gradually layered above genes, etching the genome with its own scars, calluses, and freckles.[33]

The article, an excerpt from the chapter "The First Derivative of Identity" of his book The Gene: An Intimate History,[34] was critiqued by geneticists such as Mark Ptashne, at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and John Greally, at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, because of over emphasis on histone modification and DNA methylation, while overlooking other important factors. They commented that these two processes have only minor influences in overall gene function. Steven Henikoff, at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, opined that, "Mukherjee seemed not to realize that transcription factors occupy the top of the hierarchy of epigenetic information," and said, "histone modifications at most act as cogs in the machinery."[35] It is now generally believed that histone modification and DNA methylations are major factors of epigenetic functions, aging and certain diseases,[36] and with an ability to influence transcription factors.[37] However, they contribute little to development.[38][39] In response, Mukherjee did admit that omission of transcription factors "was an error" on his part.[35]

Mukherjee also wrongly stated that "classical Darwinian evolution is that genes do not retain an organism’s experiences in a permanently heritable manner... Darwin discredited that model [of Lamarck]." But Darwin had no idea of the gene—the concept of which was established only in the 20th century. Science writer Razib Khan noted this erroneous conception, and explained that "Darwin worked in the pre-genetic era... he himself was quite open to Lamarckianism in some cases."[41]